Tuesday, June 29, 2004

So, the Niger Uranium Story WAS Correct ...

Here's a shocking story from the Financial Times - the Bush Administration's claims about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger weren't made out of thin air after all!

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales - apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein's regime - were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be forgeries. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its earlier claim.

But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

[............]

According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, thereby circumventing official export controls. "The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources," an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said.

This obviously can't be true, as everyone knows that "Bush lied, People died!" No, what we're seeing here is clearly the effect of Brie-poisoning messing with the heads of Europe's intelligence agencies; to believe that Bushitler™ and his poodle actually got something right after all, well, that really would be asking too much, wouldn't it? Unlike the hateful Bush, Saddam's really quite a decent fellow, and there's no good reason to assume that he'd have pursued his nuclear ambitions given the slightest opportunity ...